Syria’s ‘Princesses of Freedom’

Khijou comes backmost into the surviving country with her laptop.

“Here helium is,” she says.

The representation of her son, Samir, is grim. In it, he’s inactive live but his limbs are skeletal. He is starving from al-Assad's siege implicit Moadhamiyet al-Sham successful 2013.

Samir’s ribs jut retired from his skin, his bony elbow bent painfully.

Three days later, Syrian officers allegedly kidnapped him aft Khijou sent him for aesculapian evacuation with a United Nations convoy. He ne'er came back.

“They took him to the Air Force Intelligence branch, that’s what we were told astatine the time,” she recalls.

Samir would beryllium 32 years aged today, Khijou says - if, by immoderate slim chance, helium managed to past each those years of prison. Other than that, “we don’t cognize anything”, she says.

Perhaps helium went to immoderate different prison, she figures, possibly Sednaya. She is calm and composed astatine this possibility, a civilian writer simply pointing retired different injustice astir her, the years of heartbreak seemingly calcified into the information of Samir’s apt death.

The accidental that he’s inactive among the survivors becomes slimmer by the day.

Today, Khijou shares his representation and sanction connected societal media successful the hopes that someone, somewhere, mightiness person information.

Khijou al-Khateeb’s lad Samir, past 21, who she photographed successful 2013, conscionable 3 days earlier his disappearance during the siege of Moadhamiyet al-Sham [Raghed Waked/Al Jazeera]

Khijou’s different son, Muhammad, who shares a sanction with his 22-year-old cousin, is besides gone. He fled to Germany a twelvemonth agone done Europe’s forests, the thought of al-Assad’s autumn a distant dream.

Khijou supported him successful taking the journey, fearing he, too, mightiness get arrested astatine a authorities checkpoint someday and ne'er return.

He’s present stuck successful a exile camp, incapable to enactment oregon study.

In Khijou’s illustration representation connected WhatsApp, pictures of the 2 young men are copy-pasted unneurotic broadside by side, looking truthful akin - Samir’s clean-shaven representation from earlier 2013 adjacent to Muhammad’s much up-to-date beard and moustache, posing successful beforehand of a wintry skyline successful Germany.

It’s not wide yet what justness mightiness look similar for families similar the al-Khateebs.

Legal justness for Syrian situation survivors has been limited. In 2022, a German tribunal successful Koblenz convicted Anwar Raslan, erstwhile caput of investigations astatine the notorious General Intelligence Directorate’s Branch 251 successful Damascus, of crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to beingness successful prison.

That lawsuit was palmy due to the fact that Germany has implemented “universal jurisdiction”, meaning the country’s ineligible strategy tin prosecute crimes against humanity and different superior cases nary substance wherever the crimes happened.

“So that is inactive an option, of course, if immoderate perpetrators are recovered successful a state that implements cosmopolitan jurisdiction,” explains planetary transgression lawyer Nadine Kheshen.

Inside Syria, things mightiness beryllium different.

As of now, it’s been little than a period since the autumn of the al-Assad regime, truthful it isn’t yet wide however the justness strategy could play retired for situation victims and their families.

“It’s inactive not wide however the judicial and ineligible strategy volition look, astatine slightest successful the transitional period,” says Obai Kurd Ali, a Syrian lawyer and specializer successful planetary quality rights instrumentality astatine the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.

“People are inactive trying to recognize the caller system.”

Most important, for survivors similar the al-Khateeb sisters and others, is documenting what happened to them successful the hopes of aboriginal accountability, Kurd Ali says.

The sisters accidental they are consenting to talk to lawyers and anticipation to someday “file a lawsuit” implicit what happened to them successful prison.

Khijou says she simply isn’t acceptable to forgive the radical who imprisoned her and her family.

“As pistillate detainees, arsenic mothers of detainees, arsenic wives of detainees, we person nary forgiveness,” she says, matter-of-factly.

Behind her is the laptop with images of her lad Samir’s starved, skeletal body.

His lack inactive stings.

Khijou’s husband, named Muhammad, present suffers terrible depression.

“It’s been 2 years present that helium hasn’t been capable to permission the house. He sits with america astatine home, but quiet. Silent. He doesn’t speak,” Khijou says.

The elder Muhammad is with us, apparently, successful the house, arsenic we portion our saccharine tea.

But helium remains hidden determination successful the freezing apartment, beyond a bid of closed doors, past Mayyasa’s ringing airy for her constitution videos, and Khijou’s concern sewing machine.

For now, the household person their quiescent anger.